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The 8 Top Integrations You Need With Your ESN

5 minute read

How do you make sure your employees experience the best onboarding, have instant access to trainings, and can truly self-serve their needs around payroll or feedback and annual reviews? How do you make sure hiring, onboarding, training, supporting, and developing employees, along with internal communications, payroll management, and annual reviews are equally seamless and easy to manage for your HR team?

Critical responsibilities, such as delivering inspiring employee experiences across multiple touchpoints, engaging employees wherever they are and promptly responding to their needs get even more complicated when employees are both based in the head office and frontline and need to collaborate in the most productive way possible.

There are a few approaches:

1. “Jack-of-all-trades:” one complex, fully-integrated software suite, built to address all needs the staff and the organization may have within an all- inclusive platform.

2. “Jack-of-all-trades” with helpers: multiple platforms working alongside the main software suite, added when the suite isn’t flexible enough or begins to show signs of its true colors (master-of-none).

3. Integrations: combine many different best-in-breed solutions, or multiple platforms, entirely covering the needs of any organization at any stage of growth.

If I put my HR hat back on, I can tell you option 1 is pretty cumbersome, because at some point the business outgrows it, and the last thing needed is a lagging legacy system that, for example, didn’t predict signing and filing away documents in the cloud would be necessary for scaling the business.

Option 2 opens a can of worms, because it introduces multiple sources of employee data. Data that was entered separately and manually, doubling and sometimes tripling the work for the HR staff, overcomplicating tasks and increasing the chances of an error for both HR and employees.

As opposed to the previous two, 0ption 3 provides flexibility and consistency, mainly because all data changes take place in real time across platforms. Integrations also fuel speed of innovation and ultimately, the best employee experience, allowing an HR staff to respond to their employees’ needs as quickly as possible.

Here are 8 integrations that best illustrate just how helpful one system (in our example, an Enterprise Social Network, or ESN), integrated with many best-in-breed solutions can be:

1. An ESN that integrates with your existing HR systems (such as SAP-HR, Workday, AFAS, Raet, Azure, OKTA, ADP, etc.) means the HRIS is typically already in place and managed. When integrated with an ESN, updates within the HRIS are automatically reflected in the other system. Every time HR staff adds, removes or moves employees within the organization, the same changes appear in the ESN, providing a seamless and most up to date platform for communication an organization can hope for.

2. An enterprise social network platform that integrates with your existing Workforce Management providers (such as Quinyx, Manus, Softbrick De Vries, Invision, Kronos, 7Shifts, HotSchedules) is especially important for your floor staff, as it saves them time by removing the hassle of logging into multiple platforms or installing multiple apps on their devices. All the necessary information comes together in one branded ESN app.

3. An ESN that integrates with your existing Learning & Development platforms (such as Leaplines, Lef, Drillster, Mobietrain, Docebo) is very beneficial for the Head Office, as it increases engagement around knowledge and education. An internal employee communications platform, such as Speakap, which offers mobile employee communications, enables these types of programs to be front and center for every employee, delivered to where they consume the information - their phones.

4. Enterprise social network software that integrates with your existing productivity platforms (such as Capptions, Best in Grow) replaces an outdated intranet, which is typically used for files and news items, workflow and productivity solutions. With this integration, file and task management becomes easier. The typical print-fill-scan-send process is optimized, as forms become available on the web and mobile. This increases productivity and is a big time saver for all.

5. An ESN that integrates with your existing Survey & Feedback solutions (such as NBeyond, Leaplines, Hyphen, Vocoli, SurveyMonkey) enabling an easy review process, where your employees receive push notifications and reminders to participate in surveys. A Head Office can leverage these tools on top of the ESN platform, meaning no additional work is needed for the HR staff.

6. An enterprise communications app that integrates with your existing Sales Performance platforms (such as Salesforce, Cow Hills) helps to increase sales results. It allows for creating leaderboards and feeds them directly into your ESN. Employees can share sales performance data and check whether they are on target and compare the revenue of their store to other stores. This drives competitiveness and further fuels a performance increase. What’s especially powerful is seeing progress in real time, including number of transactions, customers, best performing stores, and sales reps’ OTE and results.

7. An ESN that integrates with your existing Document Management (such as Box, Google Drive, o365) is of particular interest to Head Office, because it allows for any document to be updated in real-time. This way, only the most up to date documents are available to employees.

8. An ESN that integrates with your existing Telecommunications platforms (such as Skype, Join.me, Zoom, Twilio) is very helpful for not only Head Office but also regional managers, as it allows for calls and video calls, turning your ESN into a true collaboration and communication tool.

If inspiring employee experience is your goal, staying relevant and accurate, as well as offering instant updates in real time with enterprise networks to improve company communication is crucial. With these integrations, one platform, along with other best-of-breed solutions, offers a single, flexible and all-encompassing environment that completely covers the needs of your organization. Instead of relying on one fully-integrated software suite to upgrade or innovate, you can selectively choose and add new, specialized platforms that best respond to your needs and growth stage at any given time. Added bonus? It’s an option much friendlier to your budget, too!